Keeping Surprisingly Busy.

Even though I am not currently employed and not currently homeschooling, I still feel like I have a lot to do.  This past week has involved taking my son driving, supervising a board game meetup, taking the kittens to be spayed and neutered (and picking them back up again), lunch with a friend who was on vacation, a job interview, getting together with homeschooling friends, working at the store we sell our art at, taking my daughter to biofeedback lessons (for her migraines, over an hour from home, so a 3 hour time investment), car shopping, going to church, grocery shopping and seemingly endlessly working on getting the house in better shape.  Today I don't have a lot planned so I am going to try and catch up on some things.  I may start painting the baseboards.  Sigh.  I seriously hate to paint but our house, after 19 years of living here, is needing some attention.

The kittens were so funny after their surgeries.  They are back to normal now, thank goodness, but the first couple of days, their eyes were dilated and they were not too steady on their feet, but happy and I told the kids we should rename them from Duncan and Squinch (youngest son's idea for a name) to Happy and Loopy.  Squinch just rolled around on the deck for a couple of days and I swear she was smiling.  :-P

I really enjoyed getting to meet up with my friends and the kid's friends this week.  Usually we don't do it that often, but the kids have been lamenting not seeing their friends much and they still depend on me to make social arrangements for them so I set some things up.  I'm trying to get them to contact their own friends and take initiative but this is one thing they are really bad at.  I am not sure whether to blame homeschooling, their shy natures or a combination of both, but for now, I do it.  I'm kind of hoping that at some point, both of these two at home will find at least slightly more extroverted partners who will arrange social meetups for them or that eventually they'll take responsibility themselves.

I did participate on the #describeyourselfin3fictionalcharacters thing on Facebook this week.  Here's my group.

Reading this morning.

Penelope Trunk - Education  Penelope Trunk has an excellent article on her blog this morning about how kids learn.  The links are fabulous.  I've been reading for a long time.  Click on the link that says "kids learn best when they are ready to learn."  I'd link the article directly here but I don't want to take away from the fact that another blogger found the link in the first place.  :-) It's a fantastic article and I wish I could make everyone read and understand it, especially people employed at the Department of Education.

Also I recommend reading Schools on Trial.

College Fair.

We went to a college fair last night.  After my son took the PSAT a couple of years ago, he started being courted by some very expensive, far away colleges and to be honest, I really wanted him to go to this so he would start thinking about colleges that are not so expensive and not so far away.   It worked.  He's now interested in some that are closer and more in-line with the kind of schools I want him to go to, so I guess it was a win.  I am not looking forward to my youngest moving out next year, not at all.  I am not sure how I am going to deal with it.   Anyway, the colleges were flattering to him and all tried to convince him how great their school was, along with giving generally good advice about financial aid and scholarships.  The most important bit of information that they gave us was to file our FAFSA on October 1 because they've changed the date this year.  Now we will start applying for scholarships and I am pretty sure he's going to get some.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  I really want him to live at home and go to community college.  It's not my choice though.  Sigh.  Not looking forward to the empty nest, but that's what needs to happen.  A friend of mine was talking to her mother about how she felt sad that her oldest had graduated and her mom said "if you hadn't grown up and left home, we wouldn't have him"  which puts it in perspective.  Change is actually good in this instance.  :-P

Post Homeschooling Settling In.

I still don't know what I am going to do next.  I have been looking for work, but it's slow going.   Meanwhile, I've been working on the house.  I got a bunch of Mom's clothes boxed up and taken to consignment this week.  It was kind of sad, the things I took last month,  the consignment store ended up donating 90% of it and only selling a couple of things and they are going to do the same this month.  It's depressing, but what can I do?  If I didn't live in the jungle, I'd have a yard sale, but here I am.  Still, those things are out of my house and they weren't doing us any good.  None of us could wear them and if we could, we'd just generate emotional responses from people who knew mom, so I have a few more square feet in my bedroom now and someone in a homeless shelter will be able to dress pretty.

Today, I'm going to work on cleaning out the linen closet.  When we first moved in this house, I was pregnant with youngest son, oldest was 5 and the girl was 15 months old.  I just shoved some things in the linen closet and never used it for linens.  They've been stored in the laundry room shelving unit.  So now, I'm going to put the linens where they go, only 19 years later ....  I had an excuse for not doing it then, but I'm not sure what excuse I can stretch for 19 years, but anyway, I'm going to do it today.  It will probably take a couple of hours and getting all of that out of the laundry room will help with its eventual cleaning (which I dread!)

I'm also going to set up some board game days for the boy and take him driving today, if it doesn't rain.  The two of us will also be going to a college fair on Thursday.  He's still going back and forth with what he wants to do, trade school, work or college.  He's working on several creative ideas and I have challenged him to get one of his board games published on Game Crafter by the end of this year.  He tends to be like me a little bit --- all dreaming and seldom doing, so I am hoping to get him in gear to get something published.

The girl has settled into her job now and she likes it, which is a relief.  We are still working at the little craft store and it's been more difficult to fit that in with her job.  We didn't do it last month and commissions were taken out and it was very, very painful,  so this month, we are working!  Here's what our table looks like currently.  It's cute.  The girl worked on it most of the day Sunday, trying to get some height, so everything wouldn't be flat on the table and trying to change it up a little.  These pictures are at various times of the day.  I don't think I got the final one, but I think it looks good.

Just Because.

I've always had a policy of not sharing pictures of my kids online  (now that they are all grown up, I might start) but meanwhile here are the pets, Zoey,  Zelda,  Duncan and Squinch, the cats , and Freckles and Cosmo,  the dogs.  

Driving again.

This morning, while driving, we saw a little flock of wild turkeys.

I took the boy driving again today.  His sleep schedule has been crazy lately.  He was doing some experiments to see how different types of sleep schedules affect him or something.  I don't know, but the result is that he's been sleeping at odd times and up at odd times and it was hard to schedule driving with him when he was awake and when my car was home, but we managed it today.   I let him drive for about an hour in this little subdivision close to where we live  (not our road, it's a killer) and then I let him drive on the main road to come home.  He did okay but for one incident.  I was trying to explain to him that he should stay in his lane when he turns left and aim for the lane that he will be driving in after he turns instead of cutting the corners and he got annoyed with me and took a curve too fast, inducing fear in me and making me have to use my inhaler.  It seems it's my fault for explaining what the policeman will be looking for when he gives the driver's test?  All 3 of my kids have gotten upset with me for taking a quick indrawn breath when they go too fast.  Well, sorry.  They don't have any idea how terrifying it is to teach a kid to drive and how much I don't want to do it, but I do it anyway and when I'm scared, I can't help it if I breathe in a gasp sometimes.  Hey, it happens. This is some scary stuff.  Also, they have to deal with it, because there are no other adults in their lives volunteering to do this.  They are stuck with me.  I comfort myself that I have survived the older 2 learning to drive and they drive well now.

 

Today he drove for the first time on the main road. 

Driving.

I have been teaching youngest son to drive, which so far has been a little nerve-wracking, but we had a good session today.  For the first few sessions, I just took him out to our church parking lot and we drove in circles for a bit, while he was learning to stop, go and turn smoothly.  It took a while.  He hates that he can't use his left foot to drive and he wants to go faster than I will let him, but the parking lot is small and we don't need to get up any speed.  Today, I took him to a nearby subdivision with little traffic and nice wide streets and it went well.  He is getting better with the starting and stopping more smoothly, turning curves while staying on his side of the road and not hitting the mailboxes.  It's progress.  He's lucky that he doesn't have to learn to drive in the Suburban like his brother did.  :-)

The one on the left is the one we were driving today, the one on the right is the suburban.  There is somewhat of a size difference.  :-)